we look at syria, and we see iraq, and we see, look, if president obama looks at thates and he says i can destroy that government, and then what do irn do? is it iraq all w over again? then i have to build a state. then i'm stuck there for 10 years. then i spend $1 trillion. then i have to put people on the ground. >> rose: and americaop is not without issues that it needs to address as well. >> yes, absolutely.el but i think the shadow of iraq is very much with us. s >> i think the pendulum swung from one extreme to another. president bush had two wars-- not one war, two wars simultaneously, iraq and afghanistan, each one extraordinarily ambitious in its own right. that could be described as ath strategic over-reach. now we have a policy that relieses heavily on armed drones, which can certainly kill this or that person in yemen opener some other part of the middle east, but it can't do anything to bring order to these societies. we could pick off our enemies here and there. so we've gone from being overextended to being on, i think, raising the question whether we're uninvolved as d